Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @12:24PM
from the so-you're-saying-shuttleworth-has-business-acumen dept.

ruphus13 writes "Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, claims that the company is very close to the $30M mark, at which point, they will be a self-sustaining company. While people feel that this should not worry Microsoft, the real question is whether a 10,000 person effort on a failure like Vista can actually be the paradigm of a long-term strategy. From the article: 'Microsoft had 10,000 people [the article is unclear whether these were all developers, or administrative and support staff were factored in] working on Vista for a five year period ... huge profits in any given year can mean relatively little five years on. Canonical's self-sustaining revenue may not be threatening — but it leaves one wondering how sustainable Microsoft's development process really is.'"

I am a marketing droid. One of the things that has always been confusing to me is how I sign up. There seems to be lots of places where a developer can sign up, or even just start coding in spare time, submit a few changes etc. Perhaps I haven't looked lately, but I don't see any places that want my help. Sure, I can't offer free advertising or financial resources, but I can help write press releases, ad copy, design business proposals in powerpoint etc.

Actually the last sentence was somewhat in jest, as that seems to be what most techies think of marketing guys like myself. Really we do a lot of market research, helping to set what direction a technical business will take (e.g. the strategy), also a lot of what I do is explain what is possible to the business types, based on what I learn from techies, and in turn explain to the techies why they cannot build yet another friggin datamart for $2M. I have customer service skills godddammnit! Anyway, I'd hope to be able to help. Like I said, where do I sign up? Is it with Canonical, or is there a generic "Linux" marketing effort someplace?

The first is "advertising". Advertising is great, anyone can volunteer to do it. People donate to buy ads, create them, and do crazy grassroots activities like chalking a Firefox logo in the campus quad. Of course, it's crazy expensive to buy an ad in the NYTimes, or put the Tux logo on a race car [cnet.com].

The second meaning is "market research", and frankly, that's insane. Ubuntu is free of charge, as is Debian and a zillion others. Market research in corporations are used to direct investment. I.e. telling engineers what to do. This is not compatible with volunteerism. Sure Canonical employs engineers and tells them what to do, but the way they make money is basically through consulting. I know tons of software consultants; none of them need market research because they already have a market paying their bills. Open source basically operates sans market research, on the theory that the people who know exactly what they want are best able to make it happen ("scratching an itch").

If you happen to disagree, great. But you'll have to take a guerrilla approach. I've observed the Ubuntu marketing project for a while and the thing basically falls apart from two basic conflicts: confusion over whether marketing is "research to direct effort" or "advertising," and a fundamental lack of engagement with the people who's efforts to be directed. Dodging the first problem is simple and just takes motivation and a little leadership. The second problem is much harder; a lot of people with marketing experience don't correctly understand how Linux and OSS differs from their own experiences in the corporate world.

I disagree. We need to find out why people aren't using Linux, and address their concerns.

If it's because they've never heard of it, then fair enough, you do lots of ads to tell people about it, but if it's because they think it doesn't do what they want, you need to either change the product to make it do what they want, or show them that it actually does do what they want.

I am a marketing droid. One of the things that has always been confusing to me is how I sign up. There seems to be lots of places where a developer can sign up, or even just start coding in spare time, submit a few changes etc. Perhaps I haven't looked lately, but I don't see any places that want my help.?

People usually don't sign up for Open Source or Free Software. They just do stuff, put it out there and let other people use it. To quote one Mr. Torvalds [wikiquote.org], real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it.

I have customer service skills godddammnit! Anyway, I'd hope to be able to help. Like I said, where do I sign up? Is it with Canonical, or is there a generic "Linux" marketing effort someplace?

Have you thought about starting a blog?

How about taking an active part in one or more major distribution's forum?

Much of market research(or at least as I know it I am NOT a professional in this area) seems to have an element of working with other people directly and facilitating communication between them. In the latter respect the posting to FTP format is incredibly bad and fails miserably.

In a simpler set of words:It sounds like your trying to tell a chef that he's just as well off cooking over a campfire than in the kitchen.

Well, the likelihood is that most of the Linux developers would refuse to listen if you told them the most important things to users. They are not really interested in that, in general; rather in solving their own problems.

This is why I personally have given up on Linux progressing beyond where it is now, a power user/technical niche; the people who are interested in developing it, are, by definition, NOT interested in doing the things it would take for the rest of us to use it.

The first thing you might have to do is change the way you look at things. In most free software development, we don't start with an idea and then try to sell it. Instead we start with a need and then try to fulfill it.

One of the reasons free software developers don't think about marketing is that it is often irrelevant to their goals. They have a need. They write software to fill the need. They are happy. If others also have their need filled, then the original developer is even more happy.

I'm not sure how any OS is going to eliminate counterproductive fanboys and zealots. At least on the ubuntuforums they have a moderation policy that effectively filters out the unhelpful stuff. That is one of the most effective things Canonical could have done in terms of getting quality support and community happening, bang for buck wise.

I think the major reason people dont use linux is because its still too complicated for most people, even with the efforts of canocial, theres still a lot of things you need to do inside of the terminal.
I dont think linux really needs any marketing.

Not really. Ubuntu has really removed the need for a terminal. I can easily get a system working (more easily than a fresh Windows installation) without touching the terminal. Sometimes I go to it because it gives me a power and speed a GUI *CANT* provide, but everything that needs to be done in Ubuntu can be done in GUI.

Anything that really can't (fixing a package error, for example) is explained very very clearly and tells the user exactly what to do to fix it.

There's nothing you NEED to do inside the Terminal anymore for a normal user. Just powerusers.

It doesn't matter if that's easier or faster for you, it matters if it's easier for most people (faster is good but not absolutely necessary).

Typing cryptic commands is very error-prone and disconcerting for users. You may think that the "click blah blah" instructions are long and complicated, but for most users it's what makes the most sense, and they have at least a slight idea of what's going on.

In the 1980s everyone used a CLI even on home systems. What do you think has happened since then has caused people to lose so much intelligence?

Seriously though. For Linux to be successful there needs to be a cultural transformation with regard to computing. The idea we are going to provide less information to avoid confusing people is a terrible culture.

Yesterday I was having a serious problem with my DVR, I would have loved some way to look at a log file and figure out what was going wrong. It is much harder to reverse engineer in the absence of information than to respond to complex information. That's why diagnostic medicine (for example) is so complex and error prone.

Home systems were still few and far between. Those who had them had every reason (and likely had the desire) to know a lot about what were effectively very primitive systems.

What do you think has happened since then has caused people to lose so much intelligence?

No intelligence was lost. The audience that owns computers has expanded outside of the extremely interested and geeks to basically be a requirement of modern society. It's the car of the age: most people own one in some fashion, but how much someone knows (and indeed, can know) about the nuts and bolts of the thing is limited.

Not everyone wants to have to fuck with xorg.conf just to get multiple displays working. Hell I don't, but you still have to, even in Ubuntu.

For Linux to be successful there needs to be a cultural transformation with regard to computing. The idea we are going to provide less information to avoid confusing people is a terrible culture.

We are never going to return to the days of the 1980s when anyone who had a computer could generally be considered knowledgeable about the hardware, software, and had a bit of coding experience (if even just BASIC.) We are already at a point where for most people the computer is as mystifying a black box as their car's engine is if not moreso.

But half of what is needed to make life livable for non-propellerheads is fairly basic gui interaction and human interface considerations. This is why OS X is so nice compared to Linux and is a route that could serve Canonical well if Ubuntu were to go that way. Solve the problems that force people to screw with config files, reduce the terminal to an optional path and not required, and then you have an OS X like Linux with even more capabilities.

Or we can fight it, and insist that the broken way is the best way.

I would have loved some way to look at a log file and figure out what was going wrong.

And you're also reading Slashdot which immediately puts you out of the target audience the DVR was designed for, people who will treat the DVR for what it is: a peice of AV equipment that should just work.

It's about presenting things in plain English and giving the customer choices.

If I load up a CMD window. All I see is a blank line.

I have no idea what I *can* do. However when I'm presented with a GUI. I can READ all of the options presented to me without asking.

A command line is like a drive through window without a window.

"Hello welcome to QuickieFood, how can I help you?""I don't know what do you sell?""We have over 1,000 items cooked fresh!""Do you have a Burger?""No.""Really no burgers?""No burgers. I don't even know what you're talking about.""How about some JoJos?""Nope.... never heard of those either.""Really you have 1,000 items and no JoJos or Burgers?""Nope.""Do you have a Salad?""We have 100 Salads.""Do you have a Ceaser Salad?""Yes.""Can I order one?""Do you want a GEHZDOLF with that?""A What?""A Ghezdolf.""I don't know what that is.""Well do you want it or not?""I don't know what it is how can I decide if I want it.""I can't process your order until you decide.""Fine yes give me a Gehzdolf.""I'm sorry I don't under stand your request in this context.""What context?""You just said give me a Gezdolf. I don't know what that is?""WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU JUST ASKED ME IF I WANTED A GEZDOLF WITH MY CEASER SALAD!""Oh a ceaser salad! Would you like a Gezdolf with that?""Yes Give me a ceaser salad with a Gezdolf.""Done. That'll be $2.50 at the next window."

Meanwhile someone pulls in behind you and hear them order."I would like a cheeseburger with a medium fries.""Thank you that will be $2.50 at the next window."

"The guy behind me just bought a burger and fries?""A what? We don't have burgers. I don't even know what that is.""A cheeseburger and fries!""Oh yeah we've got those.""But I asked for a burger and you said they didn't have any.""I don't see the discrepancy.""They're the same thing!""Are they now? Interesting."

Who here in their right mind would actually sit down at a computer and just randomly type in:"Sudo apt get" and expect their computer to update itself?

NOBODY! It requires research and education. Most computers for the most part are SELF TEACHING. Yes that means they're slower because they're always teaching you things. But it's also infinitely more approachable to a user. You don't need to have someone tell you how to do things. You can just sit down at and attempt to match your desires with the options on the screen.

Until machines speak something approaching a spoken language in the CLI they'll be the domain of scripters and hackers.

If you could load up bash and type in:"Please update my computer with an MP3 player."People would LOVE command line computing! But instead using the command line is like trying to give an order to a mentally handicapped ant with a napoleon complex.

Making software more 'discoverable' often results in users actually using the computer better. Yes it might be more slow, but they can ACCIDENTALLY discover a new feature. I can't think of a time I've ever accidentally discovered a new command line function.

The other problem is even after they memorize a command line solution they probably don't understand what it is they're doing. Rote memorization and recitation of commands doesn't lead to the user feeling in control of their experience. As a kid I always typed in the Magic letters: A:\Wiz.exe and it worked! I had no idea what A was. What the slash was. What the exe was. But I faithfully memorized all the commands I needed to know to get into a game. That's not empowering the user. That's enslaving them to the IT department to tell them the magic and nonsensical gibberish they have to copy off the post it note from the help desk.

Typing cryptic commands is very error-prone and disconcerting for users. You may think that the "click blah blah" instructions are long and complicated, but for most users it's what makes the most sense, and they have at least a slight idea of what's going on.

Maybe true for simple users. Power users don't type cryptic commands verbatim; they cut'n paste them directly from the source. Heck, simple users could do this too, if they understand cut'n paste.

Most likely we need a 'For Dummies' section of the community docs that explains cut'npaste on terminals and other such things you need to know in order to follow directions properly.

I've been using windows now for a little over a year. Coming from and exclusively Unix and/or Linux background since 1994. I am regularly told by the windows admins to go to the command line to do things such as recently ipconfig \flushdns I don't know for sure, but windows still seems to need a terminal for similar tasks.

Plus sudo apt-get install foo seems much easier than the windows version of get in your car and drive to the store and scan through the packages or download from some freeware site or research many vendors about foo to find a package for foo and break out the credit card in order for you to do anything.

It is what they're comfortable with, but trying to give people verbal of text instructions in a GUI is an exercize in plucking yourself bald hair by hair. Now click the little picture that looks kinda like a deformed dog.... No, the schnauzer, not the husky.

No matter how cryptic a text command might be, it is unambiguous in a text based document (just cut and paste if you want to be really sure). It can be relayed unambiguously verbally as well. That might be a pain, but describing similar looking icons ver

Maybe you think that the current culture of avoiding command line consoles is wrong, but starting a culture of "just copy this and run it in your console blindly" is just plain stupid and irresponsible.

I wonder how hard it would be to make it possible to do links in a browser that install packages. Of course, you would need the appropriate messages and user interaction, but, say you could have an instruction page that says: Install [Apache] [PHP5] [MySQL]. The user clicks on Apache in their browser, it opens a package manager, and prompts them to confirm they actually want to install it. Sure, there are security issues, to work through, but in terms of ease of use, it wouldn't get much better than that.

I want to install Gimp? okay, Google gimp ubuntuGet SER ranking so it is the first entry. I go to that page (hosted at ubuntu.com). It has a link 'Install GIMP on Ubuntu'. I click the link. It prompts, I say yes, it installs, and it shows up in my Applications menu.

I wonder how hard it would be to make it possible to do links in a browser that install packages. Of course, you would need the appropriate messages and user interaction, but, say you could have an instruction page that says: Install [Apache] [PHP5] [MySQL]. The user clicks on Apache in their browser, it opens a package manager, and prompts them to confirm they actually want to install it.

It's been done; Klik [atekon.de] is your answer. From the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] article:

klik does not "install" software in the traditional sense (i.e., it does not put files all over the place in the system). It uses one.cmg file per application. Each one is self-contained: it includes all libraries the application depends on and that are not part of the base system. In this regard, it is similar to "application virtualization". One can klik a file even if they are not a superuser, or they are using a live CD.

klik is integrated with web browsers on the user's computer. Users download and install software by typing a URL beginning with klik://. This downloads a klik "recipe" file, which is used to generate the.cmg file. In this way, one recipe can be used to supply packages to a wide variety of platforms.

On Ubuntu (and presumably other apt-based distros?) you can use apturl [downloadsquad.com]. It's in the ubuntu repo, though not installed by default. It's still pretty rare to run into an apturl link though (I ran into one on a forum somewhere once?).

Really, people who complain about copy/pasting command lines are just looking for something to complain about though, so I doubt this would satisfy them even if it were widespread. People use the command line because it's the easiest and fastest way to do things, even for a tot

This already works since Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) released over a year ago: https://wiki.edubuntu.org/AptUrl [edubuntu.org] - just write a link that goes "apt:fortunes;frozen-bubble" instead of http://whatever/ [whatever] and when an Ubuntu user clicks on this, it runs the equivalent of "apt-get install fortunes frozen-bubble". You can install any number of apps launched with a single click, and it's safe because they come from the repositories defined on the user's machine in/etc/apt/sources.list.

IMO, SuSE is one of the best (albeit it slightly resource hungry) distro's for not wanting to use the command line. It has a ton of GUIs and they are pretty easy to use. (I use it personally and my parents use it, without knowing what they're doing:) )

Probably because you use the terminal for things you know how to do there, even if there's a GUI option somewhere. Similar to how you're more likely to do Windows+R->cmd->ipconfig to find out your IP address in Windows than Start->Settings->Control Panel->Network Connections.

This post is a prime example of why you, and people like you, should not be involved in building user interfaces. That's not an insult, don't get me wrong. Techie types are valuable in areas where their expertise is useful. Trying to reason out how people actually use computers--that's not an area of expertise for most techies. I wouldn't have most UI designers writing code, either.

The GUI is less flexible, yes. That's a drawback. But for the majority of people it is far more valuable because it does not require prior knowledge to operate. A button that says "Do Foo" with checkboxes "Initialize 'Bar' Subsystem" and "Provide verbose output" is easily grasped by an individual user (especially because it's very easy to add tooltips to each of these in order to provide more information". A CLI command of "foo -Bv" is much less easily grasped by an end user who is not already comfortable with the command line.

"Microsoft Word has committed an error and must be closed" is about the most useful information for basic users. What information could you give them that's actually useful and valuable? The DLL that failed? Why will they care? What error did Microsoft Word commit? Again, why would they care? That information is available for me, as a technical user, if I want it--but I have to click a button to access it and it's out of the way of those end users.

Users don't want to know how their computers work. They don't care about that. Users don't want to have to learn how the CLI works. They don't care about that. Users want a quick, relatively efficient system for doing their stuff, rather than doing the computer's stuff. The CLI is not that system because the benefits of the CLI require more time investment and effort than users want to devote to their computer's stuff when they could be working on their own stuff. A good desktop environment tells the user nothing that they don't need to know and doesn't ask for the user to waste time on the computer's stuff, as far as that is possible.

"Microsoft Word has committed an error and must be closed" is about the most useful information for basic users. What information could you give them that's actually useful and valuable? The DLL that failed? Why will they care? What error did Microsoft Word commit? Again, why would they care? That information is available for me, as a technical user, if I want it--but I have to click a button to access it and it's out of the way of those end users.

End users given more detail can be surprisingly effective at resolving problems. For example end user deletes:

abc.dll and then gets an "file not found -- abc.dll" so they think "better put that back".

Why? Because while you may be able to navigate it, most users can't or won't. Microsoft has shown people that they can use computers without having to remember commands. They don't want to go back.

And, frankly, they shouldn't have to just because Linux is a 'technically' better operating system. Just look at Apple's recent sales increases - you think people are getting Macs because they are better for video editing? Of course not, they're getting Macs because they have great ma

The awful Linpus distro that comes with an Acer Aspire One can't deal with the odd screen size - yes they've fixed their provided apps but install something new and prepare to find most of the 'options' dialog off the bottom of the screen. No amount of fiddling with the xorg conf will make it scroll like a virtual desktop is supposed to, and why they don't provide that through the GUI is beyond me. The fact I'm having to open xorg.conf at all is a sign of deep problems.

> If you want a windows environment, go use windows.Sorry, I've purged Vista off my work laptop and installed Debian only because I was more comfy with an Unix-like development environment. But Unix has flaws, and I've written a metric ton of small scripts to make it more harry-friendly. I see some of my ideas useful to the general public, so I share them -- tell me, why doesn't/bin/rm have an option so that it moves files to trash instead of removing them? I've found some XDG-compliant commandline tras

Your right but marketing is more than commercials. Everybody knows about Linux. The real issue I see is still the lack of a way to "sell" software.There really isn't a good way to sell software for Linux.I still say an ITunes like app store for Linux is the missing piece. Throw in media as well and get people selling software.The funny thing I always hear is that any simple program will just be copied by the FOSS community. It may but it really doesn't matter. Bejeweled, AstrPop, and Tetris all show that a

The lack of marketing is what makes Linux so great. Linux is what it is because it's made by technically proficient people for technically proficient people. We don't need marketing. The fact that it is free, and technically excellent is all that is needed to attract the kinds of people that will make Linux even better.

Where are the ads (with or without Jerry Seinfeld) and the glossy brochures at Best Buy?

Marketing isn't just advertising and promotion. It is also the act of determining what kind of product a particular target market desires. The reason why linux isn't on the desktop is because it doesn't get something right that other OSes and platforms for that particular target market. If the target market is "desktop users" then I say desktop users don't care about what is running under the hood, they only care that their apps and their devices work.

In my opinion, the correct marketing strategy for a desktop linux distro would be:

MS Office must work, Adobe Photoshop must work

Work on 3rd party electronic device compatibility: cameras off the shelf from best buy must work, printers and scanners must work, ipods must work.

And no, the correct answer is not "use gimp" or "use openoffice" or "don't buy ipods". If you want to sell linux, you need to offer them something that meets the customer's needs. All I hear when open source devs say "use openoffice" is the same as forcing openoffice down their throat. Instead, the first question any good salesman asks of any customer is "what do you need?" If they then answer "I need to use itunes for my iphone" then you better get linux to work with itunes and their iphone otherwise your product is not for that customer!

Notice that I never specified how one would get devices like iphones and MS Office and such to work. One could strike an agreement with the manufacturers to release drivers, apps, and such or maybe outline a standard that manufacturers can build and work with. But guess what, that means a new marketing strategy for a new customer. In this case you're going to have to make it easier for the companies (the new target market) to make more money either by sharing the workload or offering them something that benefits them.

Unfortunately, things like the GPL and even the nature of linux limit the choices in marketing strategies (as well as the one-sidedness many FOSS advocates have). But remember, the customer is king; if you can't give them what they want, they will never be your customer.

On a side note: I've always felt that FreeBSD had a better chance for being a good base for a desktop OS simply because of licensing. Example: the FreeBSD camp has always had madwifi available with no licensing issues while the linux camp has only recently gotten some fully supported madwifi drivers without tainting the kernel. But of course in a desktop environment, I have no problem with companies providing proprietary drivers. If their product doesn't work, it goes back to the store. In a corporate environment, I do have everything against proprietary software but that is because the needs of a company (different target market) are different from the needs of a home user. If that hint wasn't big enough, I was pointing out that while linux might not be for the home desktop user, it might be better suited for the corporate office user. Get MS Office working and you've probably met most cubicle worker needs.

I'm wearing an Ubuntu hoodie (Easy marketing studying and working at a college with 800 computers), and now I suddenly feel very dirty and I'm not even getting dollar bills thrown on my used, worthless body.

If one more person asks me why they can't use their birthday or username as their password I'm going to ignite in an exothermic reaction.

Eclipse and Netbeans are pretty (incredable) flexible. Yes, they are designed for java first, but very usable for a multitude of languages. Being Opensource doesn't hurt or limit their being implemented, either.

That's what will kill Microsoft (and why I believe Ubuntu has become one of the top distros). Everytime I hear about Microsoft management story, it seems to be an exercise in bureacracy.

But what will hurt Microsoft is the day Quicken or Photoshop have Wine 1.xx on their system requirements, next to XP/Vista/Etc. I'm too cynical to think they'll come out with native Linux version, but eventually they'll want to tap into the 10 million+ users of Ubuntu and other Linuxes, if nothing else but to stop their competition from taking hold.

At this point, there isn't much reason to not be OS agnostic for those type of programs.

Not only that, I'm starting to see a bunch of software written in.Net crap. Why not write it in QT, and have an application that can run on just about every platform out there WITHOUT bowing before Microsoft, who could eat your lunch should you write the "Killer Ap".

Seriously between Wine 1.x and QT, there is no reason to write applications to Windows.

Why not write it in QT, and have an application that can run on just about every platform out there WITHOUT bowing before Microsoft, who could eat your lunch should you write the "Killer Ap".

Because having developed in.NET and QT,.NET is far easier and more enjoyable to develop in. You may call it "crap", but it's actually a well-done platform that's great for developers. You may dislike its single-platform outlook, but as programming languages, the.NET languages are top-notch.

To many companies, being able to quickly and reliably put together code is much more important than supporting the tiny marketshare that represents Linux desktop users.

having developed in.NET and QT,.NET is far easier and more enjoyable to develop in

I beg to disagree. At work we are developing a mixed application, I do my part in Qt and some other people are doing another part in.NET.

I end doing much more than the share we had agreed on at the beginning, because I'm so much more productive in Qt that they throw anything they cannot get ready on time at me. It's beginning to look like the small auxiliary part that was first assigned, at my urging, to Qt will end up bein

Maybe because, until very very recently, it was totally free to develop in.NET but you had to pay to develop commercial programs in QT? In fact, not long ago, even open source Windows programs in QT required fees. (Linux ones were free.)

And that's the problem -- people think a product or service has to make tons of $$ to be successful. Something like Ubuntu subverts our capitalist assumptions, because it actually gets cheaper the better it gets, and the more people who use it. Supply and demand work differently.

Okay... is that gross sales? Net profit? Payroll? My guess is gross sales, but the summary doesn't say. Without that other piece of information, this summary makes ZERO sense (and you can put any unit you want after ZERO).

Hey, guys, my car goes from 0 to 120 in 3! That makes about as much sense as the summary.

However, the point remains: $30 Million of what? Gross Revenue? Profit? It makes no sense to not specify what it refers to. You can have revenue of $30 Million and still be losing money hand over fist. You can have small sales, but still be pulling in a $30 Million profit margin. The summary makes no sense without this info.

Canonical also receives revenue from companies like Dell that ship computers with Ubuntu and work with it on software engineering projects like adding Linux-based features to laptops. All told, Canonical's annual revenue is creeping toward $30 million, Mr. Shuttleworth said.

That figure won't worry Microsoft.

But Mr. Shuttleworth contends that $30 million a year is self-sustaining revenue, just what he needs to finance regular Ubuntu updates. And a free operating system that pays for itself, he says, could change how people view and use the software they touch everyday.

MSFT reported revenue of $60.4 billion dollars for 2008. That comes out to about $165.5 million per day.

There are reasons why Microsoft may or may not feel threatened by things like Linux. Maybe netbooks. But I doubt a $30M company scares them much. In fact, I'd say they're much more worried about RedHat than Canonical - not because of their size, but because RH and Microsoft do really compete in the server market. How many Linux notebooks has Dell sold so far? Even by the lowered standards of Vista there's simply no comparison there.

It's not the total dollar amount that would concern Microsoft, it's that a company can afford to compete with them on the desktop. Yes, RedHat already competes on the server, but so far Microsoft has owned the desktop. Now Canonical is competing in that space, on the same hardware, through the same channels, and it might be able to make a buck doing so. Microsoft hasn't faced competition like that since OS/2 died.

And before I get flamed by the Apple users, Microsoft doesn't compete on Apple hardware, and Apple doesn't compete through Microsoft's OEM channels. If Apple sold OSX separate from it's hardware, then it would be a serious threat to Microsoft, but for now Apple can't out-sell Dell, HP, Lenovo and all the budget brands out there.

Just like RedHat took off in its own direction, after being the darling Linux distro some years ago, eventually perhaps Canonical will see the same writing on the wall and abandon the focus on the Linux desktop. The money is in servers and support contracts, the Ubuntu consumer desktop serves to give a distribution a foothold, to give it eyeballs, to focus developer attention on it. But if Ubuntu is to truly become a business it needs to be a whole lot more than self-sustaining.

What if Canonical isn't trying to make assloads of money, but are just trying to build a solid business that is profitable?

The sooner we get away from the 80's-style "If you aren't making money hand over fist now, you're worthless" thought, the better. Canonical is making a solid business providing a TON of value for it's customers via a product it's essentially giving away for free that is in many respects equivalent or better than Microsoft's products. Why shouldn't Microsoft be scared of someone who's showing the public and businesses that they don't have to pay through the ass for software? Mindshare is very important, especially in the Internet age.

If you remember a while back I said something like: There will never be a year of Linux, but it doesn't matter, what matters is that there is never a 'the last year of Linux or 'the Final year of Linux'. The fear never leaves the back of my mind that there will be a day coming when either Jobs or Ballmer or some US politician like Orin Hatch says 'If you are a Linux user, we will come find you, man, woman, child or company. You will use Windows pr you will pay fines, you will go to jail.'

This whole 30 Million, if its true, could mean Linux is here to stay, at least for a while. It could mean that we will continue to see at least a steady development of Linux games and applications. So Linux may hold on if we can for one thing, find a way to keep from losing any more important programmers, while at the same time attracting new talent. An example of this that hits close to home for me is the announcement Pixel would be leaving. I'm a Mandriva contributor. I'm worried about what will happen to Mandriva without Pixel.

The fear never leaves the back of my mind that there will be a day coming when either Jobs or Ballmer or some US politician like Orin Hatch says 'If you are a Linux user, we will come find you, man, woman, child or company. You will use Windows pr you will pay fines, you will go to jail.'

What people should care about is that Canonical is getting successful and they are doing so not because they are paying people to take the products, but because people want the products.

So this is great news regardless of what Microsoft thinks. They, Microsoft, have never thought about anything but destroying what others have created so they may maintain their monopoly. Go Ubuntu! Go Canonical!

The best quote in TFA (the original NYT [nytimes.com] one, not the one linked to in TFS):

In his personal life, he continues to test what is possible, requesting that a fiber-optic connection be installed to his house on the border of London's affluent Chelsea and South Kensington neighborhoods.

"I want to find out what it's like to have a gigabit connection to the home," he said. "It is not because I need to watch porn in high-definition but because I want to see what you do differently." (emphasis mine)

From that alone, you can tell he reads slashdot.

The second best quote from TFA:

"Look, I have a very privileged life, right?" Mr. Shuttleworth said. "I am a billionaire, bachelor, ex-cosmonaut. Life couldn't easily be that much better. Being a Linux geek sort of brings balance to the force."

Kudos on reaching the self-sustainable mark Mr. Shuttleworth! Let's hope you really do make the world a better, more free, place.

MS will not be toppled any time soon. very long term they will, because all companies die at some point.

The vast majority of end users don't know the difference between XP and Vista or that Vista was some kind of failure. They bought their computer and whatever it has is what they use. Only geeks know/think that Vista was a failure. It was only a PR failure. If it was a real failure new PCs would not be shipping with it.

Currently and for the foreseeable future almost every PC ships with an MS OS. That is the key, people do not decide which OS to run, the vendors do.

The only way that Linux is going to take off is if a vendor produces some must have pc/appliance/etc that runs Linux. I thought the netbook might be it, but now I know several people that have them and they all got the XP version.

Numbers are totally irrelevant, or at least their magnitude is. The point is that Canonical is self-sustaining. Last time I checked, Mr Shuttleworth did not need the cash to mend his shoes, he wanted to make something that was good.

When Canonical becomes self-sustaining, he will have accomplished that goal. This means development will be funded, marketing efforts will be ongoing, and with luck, people will make money.

This means that if you like and use Ubuntu, it will be there in the future. I do for both, so this is very good.

The more money it makes, given their structure, the more development and marketing they will be able to do. I don't know the financial structure of Canonical, but I doubt the people with a piece of it are more interested in money than changing the world. That likely means the people who own it will dump the majority of anything over the $30M back into the distro.

If you see what they did with $30M, imagine what an extra $10M can do?

...as long as Windows is the OS that everybody wants to use because it runs on their system, any development process is sustainable.
Vista, for all its perceived faults was a massive step forward for the Windows architecture. Yes, it had sucky bits that people didn't like, but on the whole (and going forward), the changes were for the better.
Just remember that Windows NT was pretty poor when it first came out too, as was OSX. Windows 7 looks to be shaping up quite well (at least in terms of popular reception, even if it's not much different), which Microsoft must be thankful for.

Why do people care who runs GNU/Linux and who does not? GNU/Linux marketshare is abysmal and still the community is pulling in support from hardware and software vendors, which is great!

What I don't get is this whole "PLEASE RUN LINUX!"-shit. Who cares? So, run Mac OS or Windows, good on ya. As long as we've got open standards, it doesn't make any difference at all what operating system you run on your computer. Frankly, it's mostly boring, in the end.

I like Linux and all, but I've been running Win 7 for the past week or so, and while still buggy in places, it's a VAST improvement over Vista. I hated Vista, and I love Win7.

You had two years of "Vista failure" to gain traction in the market. You have failed.

And before you jump on my throat and say "what have you done to help", I'll tell you that I haven't done anything, and I'm not demanding anything. I'm just stating the fact. I only use Linux on the server, it requires too much manual labor to run on a laptop. And by "run" I mean suspend and wake up, use wireless, support all hardware, etc.

Heck, you even failed to beat Mac OS X on the desktop, in spite of Apple daring to charge money for it.

How much source code from Q-DOS do you think still remains in the Windows NT tree? The only portion of BSD that I'm aware of that was - at one time - used for NT 3.51 and 4.0 was the IP stack. Which is a pretty dinky part of the kernel, never mind the entire OS tree. SpyGlass wrote a little web browser that could render no more than HTML 1.0 back in the day - how much of that do you think still remains in Internet Explorer 7?